


On What Ground Do We Stand

by Terion



Series: Bleeding Memories [10]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Bleeding Effect, Don't copy to another site, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28757508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terion/pseuds/Terion
Summary: As Desmond Miles' doctor, Eric Warren has a responsibility to tell him what is happening to him. However, since Desmond is currently not present in his own body, he instead has to have the talk with those whoarethere.
Series: Bleeding Memories [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/99263
Comments: 30
Kudos: 96





	On What Ground Do We Stand

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO, FRIENDS!
> 
> It's been a while, hasn't it?
> 
> Well...here we are again. Another small part of this story for all of you, which pretty much dragged itself out of me since this past weekend. You all can give some thanks to [ScribeOfRED](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeOfRED/pseuds/ScribeOfRED) for this one getting out because I had been sitting at a severe lull in this series. And then there was a slew of comments, I did some replies and rereading, and suddenly...here we are.

"...the process is slow but so far as I can tell it seems inevitable that it will happen."

Eric Warren just sat there as he finished speaking, nervously wiping his sweating hands along the side of his pants. There was a furrow in the brow of the man - men? was men more accurate even though only one face was looking at him - sitting across from him and he wasn't certain they understood.

"You...you are saying that we are dying," came the clipped response in a low voice that he recognized now as the eldest of what he personally called Desmond Miles' 'ghosts'. The Crusades era assassin. The one whose name he knew he still wasn't pronouncing correctly but the man had never corrected him. "That _he_ is dying."

Eric just nodded slightly.

"Yes.”

For a moment silence greeted him in reply to that and he wasn’t certain how to read the expression on the face of the man seated across from him. It was made more difficult by the fact that the expression on that face kept shifting wildly from calm acceptance to anger to horror and back again to calm.

That calm acceptance gave way to a stern expression that gave _nothing_ away and the entire body language of the man stiffened up, becoming more of a militaristic bearing. Haytham Kenway, then. He was getting better at recognizing them.

“Explain it again, Doctor,” the now harsher sounding voice demanded. Then there was a frown, followed by a more gentle, "In as simple of an explanation as possible. The language you made use of was mostly unfamiliar to all of us."

Oh.

Right.

Eric sometimes forgot that he wasn't talking to Desmond Miles but to three long-dead Assassins and a Templar whose most recent recollection of time was what would become the United States fighting the British for independence.

"My apologies," he said quickly. "Sometimes I forget...well, what you all are."

"At the moment we are concerned for the state of our descendant, Doctor," Kenway continued sternly. "Our own situation is not of our concern."

 _That_ was news to Eric.

Tilting his head curiously to the side, he frowned and leaned forward slightly. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Surely knowing you have the potential of dying again is concerning?"

Desmond's mouth started to open but before the stern tone of Kenway could emerge, the posture of his body abruptly shifted to a much more relaxed one. "Our concern," he then spoke, a faint hint of an Italian accent flavoring his voice, "begins and ends with our _ragazzo_."

Who was the Italian one again? Audit...something? Yes, Auditore.

"None for yourselves?"

Eric met what were and _weren't_ Desmond Miles' dark eyes and abruptly felt the shock once more that he really _was_ looking at someone else besides the man. For a while he had not believed the stories but this last year had taught him better. Now he truly could say that the man did carry his ancestors around with him and one of _them_ was looking at him now. Someone who was _old_. Who had had his time, had lived his life, and had died at least mostly content.

"We are but _fantasmi_ ," Auditore said sadly. "A shadow of the past and our time has long been done and dust. This is _his_ time and we would rather him see it." There was a pause and then a casual shrug, the motion so shockingly fluid. "If we must go in order to save him, we would make that choice without pause."

"I…" Eric blinked then said quietly, "Unfortunately I don't know if that would help. Or even how we would do it. What...what happened to him in that Temple is so far beyond me, beyond _our_ science, that I can't even begin to unravel it. I certainly have no idea of how to remove any of you from his mind."

"We know," came a quieter, more soft-spoken voice now. Eric looked again at Desmond and now his body was coiled tight like a spring, sitting upright with something close to Kenway's military precision but different. Connor, then, the Templar’s son. "If we could, however, we would. As his Doctor we wanted you to know that _Desmond_ is the most important thing to us. If you can save him, save him."

"Do not spend time worrying about us." The voice and posture was abruptly Auditore again, curled like a cat instead of a coiled spring. " _He_ is your priority."

Then there was a shift again, back to the wound-tight calm of the Crusades assassin. Altayear. "He deserves to live. We have no fear of our own deaths."

"I died at the hands of my own son, looking death firmly in the eye." Kenway was back along with that military posture, the switch between the two almost too quick to catch. Desmond's body tilted its head and then the Templar spoke again, "So tell us again, Doctor. What has become of our descendant...in the simplest of terms."

Eric just stared for a moment before he squared his shoulders and nodded firmly at the man. "In simplest terms," he began, "Desmond's literal brain matter is unraveling. Quite like...like a bit of fabric that hasn't been properly tied off. It...it doesn’t seem to be a quick process, so we may very well have some time to..."

To do what?

What _was_ there to even do?

Licking his lips nervously after his pause, he finally finished, “To try some things.”

“How much time does he have?” Altayear asked. “Do you have a...what is the word?”

“Idea?” offered Auditore’s voice from the man’s mouth without his posture ever changing from that of the Crusades assassin.

There was a snort that Eric assumed was Kenway before Connor’s quiet voice interrupted, “Estimation, Master. The word you’re looking for is estimation.”

“Yes,” Altayear stated with a sage seeming nod. “My thanks, _Ratonhnhaké:ton_. Now, Doctor, please, what is the estimation of how much time he has left?”

It struck Eric like a truck how now, after the conversation about their own fears of dying, they were specifically referring to only Desmond’s survival. There was no atypical fear of death in their words, no screaming, no crying like he had seen in the past with those who he had had to inform of their deaths. These men did not _fear_ death...and why would they?

They had already _died_.

They were _ghosts._

“Given my projec...sorry, given the work that I have done to attempt to guess at how long, there are several possibilities.” Lifting a hand to run it back through his hair, Eric went on, “The time frame is not entirely exact, I want you to know that.”

There was only a slow nod in response to his words and he moved on.

“There are no exact estimations as to how quickly the disintegration...sorry, collapse may be an easier word to understand...the slow collapse of his mind may proceed. So far, over this year since everything has happened, it’s been slow. It wasn’t until I even looked back at previous scans we had done of your - of _his_ \- brain that I could see it.”

“So it is possible we have quite some time,” Altayear interrupted. “The years you originally spoke of as a possibility?”

Eric grimaced, not wanting to give them too much hope. Too much hope could lead to so much worse.

“Years are possible but there is always the chance that the collapse could gain speed.”

Abruptly the body language of the man sitting in front of him shifted again, becoming Kenway once more, and he asked, “And what methods are there to attempt to retrieve him?”

“There…” he grimaced again, this time harder, and shook his head before he met Desmond’s dark eyes. “There aren’t any exact methods to this.”

Something flickered across the man’s face and Eric wasn’t sure who the emotion was from. But he had seen similar emotions enough to recognize it as _loss._

The shift in body language was more subtle this time and then Connor asked, “Talk to us, Doctor. What can we do?”

What _was_ there to do?

“Well,” Eric began slowly, “I want to have you in for a scan every month from this point forward. We need to keep careful track of the decay rate and, for now, we’ll begin with a monthly scan. If it appears the collapse is gaining speed, we will move to a bi-monthly schedule. As for what we can do...I recommend no large physical strain. You may train lightly as you have been but no leaving the compound or going out on missions.”

“None?” repeated Connor.

“I don’t want to risk another head injury potentially causing further damage.”

Desmond’s body stiffened and then one of them nodded. “Yes,” Connor said quietly. “Of course. We don’t want to make things worse.”

Abruptly the fluid intensity of Auditore returned and the hints of Italian accent were suddenly clipped and stern as the other assassin spoke. “While these are all good plans, Doctor, they are not really what _we_ can do.”

Sighing, Eric replied, “I wish I had a real answer for you...but I don’t. Most people who are actually affected by Dissociative Identity Disorder - which is really the closest natural thing I can compare your situation to - don’t have the problems you have. They don’t _lose_ the default personality. I can recommend doing things that you know will be familiar to Desmond to attempt to jar him loose or meditation but…”

He trailed off and dropped his head to rest his chin against his chest, unable to continue looking at them. As he closed his eyes, he heard Altayear’s faintly accented voice say softly, “But there is little we can actually do but wait.”

“ _Yes_ ,” he answered, feeling like that single word was clawed out of his chest.

Silence sat heavily between them for quite some time before he heard Desmond’s feet shuffle deliberately across the floor and lifted his head to mee the man’s eyes. That dark gaze was _heavy_ as it looked at him and then Kenway asked in an almost gentle tone, “What happens if we are unable to retrieve him, Doctor?”

Part of him wanted to lie.

Lying, however, was against what he believed about his profession.

The truth was the most important thing in the medical world. With lies, people died so much more often than they already did.

Licking his lips, Eric quietly replied, “You all die. If we fail, his brain continues to collapse. Eventually, his body will begin to lose control of itself because of the collapse. Wherever you all exist within his brain may also be destroyed but who knows what part that is or how that will affect other things. In the end, there will come a point where we will need to discuss where it becomes a point to consider mercy.”

“Mercy?” Kenway repeated curiously. Then he frowned and spoke again, his tone flat and hard. “You mean ending his life.”

“Yes.”

“Would that not be considered murder by your profession?”

Eric chuckled darkly at that and met the gaze of the ghost looking out through Desmond Miles’ eyes.

“I’ve worked with the Brotherhood for more than a decade,” he said with a sudden hard inflection in his own voice. “I have learned that there are times when the mercy of death _is_ saving a life, Haytham Kenway.”

It had been a hard lesson but he had _learned it_.

Kenway nodded sagely at that and then he reached out to clasp his hand over Eric’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “You are a good man, Eric Warren,” he stated in a gentler tone.

“If we cannot save him,” Altayear then went on, Desmond’s body language never changing, “know that you did all that you could. And that we thank you for that.”

Tears stung his eyes at that and Eric bowed his head as Connor softly added, “You have done everything you could for him. And us.”

A second hand rose to grip his other shoulder and then he heard Auditore.

“Do not blame yourself if this fails, _ragazzo_. There was nothing we or you could have done.”

Nodding, choking on a sob, Eric lifted his head to look at Desmond’s face again. The man he might not be able to save. The man who had helped _save them_.

Swallowing hard, he quietly said, “We won’t give up yet. _Not. Yet._ ”

He wasn’t sure who it was because his eyes were blurred with tears but one of the ghosts curled Desmond’s mouth up into a warm smile and he swore that the voice they spoke in was flavored with hints of all of them. Just as it had been when they had awoken without Desmond’s mind there alongside their own.

“No, Doctor,” they said in that rolling clash of accents with a surety that filled him with an emotion he hadn’t felt in a year, “we will not give up yet. There is still room for hope.”

_Hope._

Yeah.

Yeah, there was still room for hope.


End file.
